Touted as a compelling and arguably superior alternative to Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org begs the question: is it as good as it's cracked up to be? The original canary completed her shift and I've taken over and headed canary-like to continue mining the depths of this free suite alternative. I'm testing its limits by using it to complete common and advanced business tasks. If I report back to you in short, desperate breaths that the suite is impossibly difficult to use, you will know better than to send in more miners. But if I come out of this experiment alive and well, you may just have to ask yourself, as I asked myself, "Why not give it a try?"

If you have not been following this series and have not yet seen OpenOffice.org, you might want to back up for a moment to establish your context here. Download and take a look at this open source office suite (OpenOffice.org) or in the interest of time, read previous articles in this series.

> Time to Shine
In the last article in this series, I tried my hand at creating a form using OpenOffice.org Writer. It was a form for the children's organization at which I volunteer. We had decided to spotlight each child during our weekly meetings to help the children get to know one another and make each child feel special. I e-mailed the form I created to all the parents and got a resounding response. Now that I had all the information I needed, it was time to figure out the best way to spotlight each child.

The other volunteers and I decided that a multimedia presentation would best keep the children's interest and help make the spotlight time special for each child. I was assigned the task of creating the presentations, so I flipped on my laptop and double-clicked on OpenOffice.org's presentation program, Impress.